[Stoppard has] defined the quality that distinguished him from many of his contemporaries as "an absolute lack of certainty about almost anything." (p. 48) There are signs, however, [in his most recent work, Every Good Boy Deserves Favour], that history has lately been forcing Stoppard into the arena of commitment…. [Every Good Boy Deserves Favour] started out in Stoppard's mind as a play about a Florida grapefruit millionaire, but his works have a way of changing their themes as...

Tom Stoppard's work has been notably generous with many commodities, from verbal wit to metaphysical ennui, but with one it's always been notably stingy. Bluntly, his characters have lacked strong personal feelings. A sort of rueful tristesse has, on the whole, been their dark night of the soul. It was in that mood that both the philosopher-hero of Jumpers contemplated the disloyalties of a wife he was supposed to love and, rather earlier, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern shrugged and joked their ...

As plays with full symphonic orchestras on stage go, [Every Good Boy Deserves Favour] is probably the best, but was the trip really necessary? Suppose Ringling Bros, had approached our saltatory author with a request for a play incorporating its entire menagerie on stage, would he have likewise jumped, or boggled, or recoiled? The better part of cleverness is to know when to resist it. This particular farce with music concerns two Alexander Ivanovs in the same enclosure—whether it is a ward or a cell...